


His Red-Stained Footsteps

by CoranCoranTheGorgeousMan



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Genocide, Meta, Post-Season 2 Speculation, Royalty, Season 2 spoilers, Seriously major season 2 spoilers, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-01
Updated: 2017-02-01
Packaged: 2018-09-21 06:07:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,620
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9535115
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CoranCoranTheGorgeousMan/pseuds/CoranCoranTheGorgeousMan
Summary: Standing facing their newly constructed teludav, crucial to their newest, most desperate measure yet, Coran tells her softly, “Your father would be proud of the leader that you’ve become.”She thinks about that, and isn't sure.





	

**Author's Note:**

> In canon it's clear that Alteans live for a lot longer than Humans. However, for convenience, all year measurements will be written in their Earth equivalent, because we don't know how long an Altean year is to an Earth one, or for how long Alteans live.

“Tell me that story about when you and Coran fought a Weblum, father!”

Alfor just chuckles fondly at her. At five years old, his daughter is a Princess in every way possible. It’s impossible to forget that she is the second heir to the throne of Altea; she is, after all, a near spitting image of the current first heir (with her mother’s pink markings). And if you somehow forget that, you can easily gain a clue or two from her personality. Allura is many things – spirited, charming and generous, to say the least. But she also has very expensive taste, and it’s usually for sparkly things. She adores everything that glimmers, from gems to glittery dresses to dazzling hair accessories. Her bedsheets are even adorned with small golden beads that shine in the early morning light, that keep falling off and getting everywhere, to be picked up by countless castle servants and be trodden on and mashed into the carpet. And her attitude is simply growing by the day. Just the week before, when Junaberry juice stained her favourite dress, in her upset she had demanded a new one (despite it being a one of a kind, original design, and not so easily attainable). It’s normal for a Princess to be so demanding, he decides. One day, she’ll be the monarch of Altea and responsible for the castle and the paladins. She’ll need that ability to bark commands and be listened to, so long as she is reasonable and fair and trusted.

And, of course, she is certainly her father’s Princess. To him, she can do no wrong.

“Father!”

He is met with a fierce scowl, and a pout close to forming on her lips. A small hand tugs on his sleeve.

“Oh, sorry, Allura, I got lost in my thoughts.” He smiles at her, so sweetly that her pout doesn’t visit for long. “The story of the Weblum, was it?”

Yes, Alfor decides. She’s a wonderful Princess, and she’ll make a fine Queen one day too.

At nine, Allura is inquisitive, scampering around the castle and bothering just about every ambassador and dignitary around. She has a desire to learn, a natural curiosity that only grows larger with each new piece of knowledge she acquires. She still listens to her father’s tales of his numerous adventures with glee. She asks for him to recount more battles he has fought as the Red Paladin of Voltron (which had just been formed, finally, after hundreds of years of planning, when Allura was seven, by the creation of the Black Lion from a comet that had crashed on one of the Galran home planets) than he can remember, across numerous planets and over numerous issues, in the name of Altea and of bringing peace to their universe.

“One day, father, I want to be a Paladin of Voltron,” she declares one warm summer afternoon, a year after her mother has been buried, when they are strolling around Altea’s public gardens. They have been stopped, several times, by various, ordinary citizens, congratulating Alfor on his latest victory, on a planet two galaxies away.

(“Thank you, ma’am,” Alfor had replied to one elderly lady, his sweet smile on his lips, “but it was a victory for Voltron, not for me personally.”)

“Why’s that, Allura?” He asks.

“Because I want to be just as great of a ruler as you are, father, and you’re a part of Voltron.” She drops to smell a Junaberry flower – indigenous to Altea’s mountains, of course, but bred here in the public gardens for their enjoyment. They really are beautiful flowers, and it’s perhaps natural that they are Allura’s favourite. 

He smiles indulgently at her. He would tell her that her ambitions are too large, but he knows his daughter. For her, anything is possible. She’ll be a fine Queen one day. “Which lion will you pilot, then?”

“Oh, the red.”

“Because it’s mine?”

“Because it’s yours.”

Wherever he goes, still an active member of Voltron, he tries to bring her gifts from the planets they visit. She still loves shiny things, and he suspects that she always will. In his absences, she still receives tales of the universe around her, small secrets of other cultures and planets and peoples being whispered into her ear. Coran really does adore her, and Alfor is well aware that the feeling is mutual. He’s grateful to him. Alfor tries, but he can’t be there a lot for his daughter, and now that her mother is gone, she is often left without either of her parents. 

When Allura is fourteen, Alfor is on a mission to the Balmera. He receives word that his mother has not long passed. He finishes the mission, returns to Altea with the rest of Team Voltron and their lions, and comforts his daughter. Afterwards, he sits in the cockpit of Red and cries himself – for his mother, for his daughter, and for the already limited freedom which he has now lost. He then takes off his uniform, and dresses in a new one, fit for the King of Altea. A new Paladin wears his old armour and flies Red. 

Being the King is strange. He hosts meetings for various diplomats and leaders of other worlds, and then travels to attend events hosted by others. He spends hours dealing with the Governing Council of Altea, visits various communities around his world, and pushes paperwork around his desk. Whenever the Castle of Lions is on the move, he pilots at the helm, as is tradition. He misses the days when he was just a Prince and a Paladin. It was a lot simpler. Now, he is the one to command the Paladins, to tell them what their next mission is and send them on their way. He’s head of the Voltron Coalition, but not one of their members. And somehow, he sees his daughter even less now than ever.

(“You make a far better King than you did Paladin, Your Highness,” he is told by a long-serving representative of the west district of Altea’s southern mountains. He can’t remember his name. He’s terrible with names. He’s pretty sure that as King he should know their names, or make more of an effort to remember them, but instead he just gets Coran to whisper them into his ear. “Better to leave that mindless combat stuff to those who don’t have anything better to do.”

He smiles that sweet smile of his, and just thanks him for his compliment. That ‘mindless combat stuff’ was far more fulfilling to him than this could ever be.) 

Allura is a baffling mix of rage and sadness, with a fair bit of boredom and grump in there for good measure. She was close to her grandmother, and has clearly been deeply shaken by her loss. Alfor wishes his wife was still here. She always understood Allura better than he did. He tries, but Allura begins resenting his absences more and more. He tells himself that she’ll understand one day. Being the monarch of an entire world is not as easy as it sounds. He’s still grateful to Coran, who begins dragging Allura along with him on his diplomatic missions as the Royal Advisor and Official Trainer of the Paladins. She enjoys it more than she lets him know, travelling across the universe and interacting with so many different people. 

At fifteen, she asks him to let her pilot the castle to the nearest planet in their solar system, as part of their annual peace festival. It’s an extremely short journey, with no complicated manoeuvres, and the planet that they’re travelling to is sparsely populated, with a large designated area for them to land in. She’s flying through her piloting lessons with perfect grades, and so he decides to grant her this. The Paladins manage to form Voltron in the end, preventing the castle from colliding with the surface of their other neighbouring planet. The incident is, thankfully, taken in good humour by all their guests, including both their correct host planet and their almost host planet. 

“I see you’re already looking to surpass your father, Princess!” Coran teases her. It’s been several hours, and she knows that she must continue to do her duties as the Crown Princess, but she looks as though she would rather be anywhere but there.

“Whatever do you mean by that, Coran?”

“Your father never told you about that time that we were just young lads, when he crashed that space pod onto -”

“Coran,” Alfor says calmly, materialising from where he has been speaking to an ambassador of their neighbouring planet 50 yards away, his sweet smile on his face. “Please stop talking. Immediately.”

Naturally, it doesn’t take long for Allura to hear the whole tale, and it does manage to make her feel a lot better about her own mistake. At least she’s never managed to crash a mere space pod. (She does, though, just a month later. Alfor just gives her that look with his sweet smile on his face, and she fumes.)

By the age of seventeen, she’s calmed, no longer flying into anger or annoyance at every little thing. It’s the general opinion of the inhabitants of the castle, and throughout Altea overall, that she is shaping into a fine young leader, more than capable for someone of her position. Alfor needs little persuasion to sing her praises, and Coran is usually close behind.

(“You must be so proud of Allura, Your Highness,” one guest at some conference or another remarked to him once. Names were really not his forte. It wasn’t helped by the fact that many of his acquaintances tended to remark on Allura’s ability to him, blurring one face into another. “She truly is like you.”

Alfor just hopes that Allura isn’t entirely like him. Hopefully, she’s inherited her grandmother’s enthusiasm for the diplomacy required for the job. And perhaps a better memory.)

She begins sitting in on his various meetings, listening to all sorts of issues and coming across a wide range of diplomatic difficulties. To his relief, she at least has a natural talent for diffusing tense situations and pleasing his political opponents, even if he’s not sure that she enjoys it. She even, somehow, manages to help in calming Zarkon over his irritation concerning the progression of a militarised, highly technological society from a quadrant near the Galran home planets. Voltron decides ultimately to not take further action over the matter, unless they indicate their hostility further, although Zarkon is still reluctant to leave them be. 

A year later, one of the Galran home planets – specifically, Zarkon’s home planet – is destroyed by said advancing emerging society. Most of their fighters were destroyed in the attack by the Galran fleet, but it had all happened so suddenly that there was no hope for either the planet or most of the citizens who lived there. The castle only just received the distress signal, moments after the attack was discovered, before the planet had started crumbling. The Castle of Lions and the Paladins had arrived just in time to help finish of the enemy fleet. 

“I’m so sorry, my dear friend,” Alfor says quietly, a hand on Zarkon’s shoulder. They stand at the helm of the castle and just look, the once vibrant, bright planet already bereft of life.

“We should have been here quicker.” Zarkon looks numb.

“We should have.”

“Voltron should have been here.”

“We should have. How did this happen so suddenly?”

“We knew that this was a possibility. I warned you that this was a possibility.”

“We could never have guessed that the situation would escalate like this, Zarkon.”

“This shouldn’t have happened.”

“No. You’re right. It shouldn’t have.”

Allura joins Zarkon’s son, Lotor, in tackling the ground troops that are scrounging over the planet, searching for the survivors. He’s never been prouder of her, doing what many would consider to be the ‘grunt work’ in aid of their allies. She really is his daughter.

But that situation was just the beginning of the end of the current Voltron Coalition.

(“Voltron must operate based on the Paladin Code of Honour, Zarkon. I know how you feel, but I cannot permit you to do this. We will dismantle their military and political structures and ensure that they cannot do this again. We must not stoop to their level.”

“How would you feel if it was Altea that had been destroyed?” Zarkon spits. “Altea destroyed, and Voltron, the ‘Defender of the Universe,’ nowhere in sight, and orders to not retaliate?”

Alfor doesn’t answer. He admits only to himself that he isn’t sure what he would do.

“Voltron was not there, Alfor. And we could have been. The blood of those people that died, my people, are on our hands! On Voltron’s! On Altea’s!”)

When Allura is nineteen, Zarkon, leading a group of Galran druids, pilots, soldiers and sentries, all unhappy with the destruction of one of their planets, forcibly take control of the Galran government, and destroy all who disagree with either their objectives or their methods. Alfor later reflects that as much horror the new Galra Empire have inflicted on their universe, he must always remember that the first planets Zarkon invaded were his own. 

Next is the one that destroyed his own.

It’s the first time in his life that he’s ever been at a loss on what to do next, truly. Never before has a Paladin went against the orders of the Commander of the Voltron Coalition. There is no set protocol for something like this. And Zarkon is not acting on behalf of Voltron – he has made that very clear. Alfor’s not even sure if he can still consider Zarkon to be the Paladin of the Black Lion anymore. He still has the armour, and the bayard, but he has given up the position as effectively as he himself did when he handed in his own and became King. The only difference is that Zarkon has not inherited the position of King. He has fashioned himself Emperor. 

They take no action. Not yet. He instead holds diplomatic international conferences, where he attempts to figure out Zarkon’s intentions. An all-out war would be extremely bad for the entirety of the universe. The Galran military might, under Zarkon’s new regime, is magnificent. And so, he waits.

A year later, the Galra Empire, headed by their Emperor, begins attacking Altean fleets at random. Some of their battle cruisers, heading out or returning from assisting allied, non-militarised planets, are specifically targeted and taken down. Their supply and cargo ships are raided, and a civilian ship is even captured, all within a day.

King Alfor, when the attacks first start happening, is at another diplomatic conference regarding Zarkon’s increasing reaches for power. The representative in attendance for the Galra Empire, not Zarkon (his lack of attendance had been viewed as suspicious, since he usually was there to insist that he was only taking measures to protect his home planets), just smirks at him when they hear. He doesn’t smirk for much longer, as he realises just why Alfor is the ex-Paladin of the Red Lion.

Allura, in his absence, performs beyond expectation in dealing with the relief efforts for the ships that were attacked, and starts negotiating with Zarkon immediately for the return of their civilian ship. She is calm, and collected, and makes the most of all the resources that Altea has to offer. (She also sends out several spies to report on the status of their captured civilians, and to protect and rescue them should the situation escalate.) When he returns, and hears all of this, he thinks to himself that it’s the first good news that he’s heard in days. He knows that she’ll make a fine leader one day. 

The war wages for two years straight. Try as they might, they certainly don’t manage to save all their civilians from the bombings, and young combatants are lost in the effort to protect Altea against Zarkon. The Yellow Paladin falls early in the war, and it is a massive blow to both Voltron and the entire war effort. While they do find a new Paladin, quickly out of necessity, she is forced straight into war with no experience with either her Lion or her team. Altea’s allies step in to help, and are then attacked by the Galra Empire in return. It’s a bloody, horrific time, most of it passing to the background music of explosions and screams and crying and loss. He tries to shield Allura from the worst. But, she is a grown woman now, and is not one to sit idly by while her people risk their lives. She ends up being fundamental in organising the war effort. He just wishes she didn’t have to be. 

Two years pass, and most of Altea is dead. He knows the end is near. He closes his eyes, before deciding that if nothing else, he will save his daughters life. He is sure that one day, she will be able to do what he has not been strong enough to. He requests Coran to accompany her, and leaves them to slumber in the cryogenic pods, before he arranges for his own quintessence to be left in this world when he leaves it. The Black Paladin fell in battle with Zarkon, who managed to steal the black bayard. He locks Black up, before he tells the four remaining Paladins to scatter, and hide their lions. He can’t let Zarkon have Voltron. 

(He tells Red that one day, he’s sure that Allura will pilot her. He just wishes he could be around to find out if her sweet, childhood desire to be more like her father will ever come true.)

He staggers forward, a hand on his side. His armour is drenched in blood, creating a trail beneath him where he walks. He thinks of his daughter, and he collapses.

Roughly 10,000 years in the future, Princess Allura awakens, and is caught before she falls. The last of her people, including her father, are gone. It’s just her and Coran left. She refuses to give up hope, though. She can’t just let Zarkon have Voltron. Speaking to her father is a relief, although hearing him admit that he was wrong to send the lions away is disconcerting to her. To Allura, her father is infallible. She only hopes that she can begin to command half as well as he did.

Each victory, no matter how minor, keeps her going. Saving the Balmera, in particular, gives her hope that Voltron is moving in the right direction. This is what she needs to do. This is how she can avenge her people, and save the rest of the universe. She doesn’t know what she would do without Coran, though. At least she’s not alone in surviving the destruction of their planet. She misses Altea so much. Her father’s AI can only give her so much comfort. Nonetheless, she is devastated when she lets that last part of him go, even though she knows that she must.

(“But, as leaders,” her father told her, as she sat amongst the Junaberries, “we have to what is right for our people. Even if it means great sacrifice.”)

Even if she does not feel as though she deserves to be called a leader yet, she understands that sentiment well. She will do anything to prevent Voltron from falling into Zarkon’s hands. Even if it means that she is the one who is captured, and not their Black Paladin. Shiro is needed to form Voltron. She’s not delusional – she recognises her own importance to their cause. But this is just another sacrifice a leader must make, in the name of the bigger cause. And she has come to care for these humans, almost as if they were her own people. She cannot lose them too.

They do save her, and a part of her feels relief, despite her terror over Voltron being brought so close to Zarkon. Naturally, her relief does not last long, as she finds herself separated from them again, spiralling through an endless black void, and so close to losing the only other Altean alive.

(“I’m sorry,” she says to Coran, who looks so small and vulnerable and nearly gone. “You were like a second father to me.” She can’t bear the thought of what she will do if she loses him too, and knows she will be grateful to Pidge for the rest of her life.)

The days begin to spiral into one another, a cycle of Zarkon’s forces finding them before they are attacked again, a repetition that never seems to end. She looks for a reason, any reason, and concludes that she is it. Zarkon never found the castle while she slept for 10,000 years. She’s now ashamed that she left, that she abandoned her team and put herself into a vulnerable position, but she needed to know, even if she did not behave in anyway like a leader should. And it worked out in the end – they were able to remove from their list of suspects both her and Keith (even if she wasn’t entirely sure why he was on that list to begin with). 

Standing facing their newly constructed teludav, crucial to their newest, most desperate measure yet, Coran tells her softly, “Your father would be proud of the leader that you’ve become.”

She thinks about that, and isn’t sure. She’s not sure that a good leader would have failed to mention that their greatest enemy once piloted one of the lions. She’s conflicted over if a good leader should happily take all the alliances that she can get, or if she should refuse aid from people of the same species that killed hers.

“I hope so, Coran.”

They stand in silence for a moment, watching their Paladins stand in the centre of the teludav. She wonders how they’re feeling about tomorrow.

“Princess, may I ask you something?”

“Of course, Coran.”

“It’s just – I’ve been wondering as to why… why you’ve never taken the title of Queen yet? You… have been functioning as Altea’s Queen in every way but name. You are certainly entitled to, if you wish.”

“I know I am. I just don’t feel ready for that yet. It’s such a big responsibility, and – I just don’t want to, until I feel as though I can compare to my father.”

Coran walks forward to stand next to her, and places a hand on her shoulder, and smiles gently at her. “I know you have this view of your father as being a great, noble leader, who could stare into the eyes of anything and fight back. And you should. But what few people know is that he actually hated the job.”

“He did? I don’t believe you.”

“He did,” Coran confirms. “The diplomacy was boring; the expectation was daunting; the entire thing was limiting. He thought that anyone else could be better suited to it than he.”

“But – but father was such a good leader.”

“Oh, he was. Great, even. A natural at it, you could say. He hid his distaste well. But he would have preferred to be the Red Paladin over the King of Altea any day. Some days, after a particularly frustrating meeting or conference, you could just tell he wanted to find Red and play dodge with an asteroid field.”

She stares out to where the Paladins are still standing. “I never would have guessed.”

“He didn’t want to be King, but he did it anyway… What was it he always said again?”

“‘But as leaders, we have to do what is right for our people. Even if it means great sacrifice.’” His words, that he had spoken so many times before, feel strange on her tongue. 

“That was it! Your father never felt like he should be the King, and yet he did it anyway. And he’s remembered as a quiznacking good one too.”

The next day, she seeks out Keith, apologises for her prejudice, and sends on what many would call a suicide mission. She has confidence in his abilities, and just hopes that he’ll be alright. It’s for the greater good of the universe. And then she stands at the helm of the Castle of Lions as she commands her Paladins to give it all that they’ve got, knowing full well that this battle could decide the fate of the entire universe. 

Four days later, the remaining six of them stand in the control room, no closer to knowing where Shiro has disappeared to since he first vanished into thin air. They’re running on nothing, she notes absently. A steady swarm of Galra fighters have been attacking them at random ever since they defeated Zarkon. It had been naive of her to presume that if they got rid of their Emperor the rest would just fall back peacefully. She looks at how tired they all are, preoccupied with finding Shiro and being on edge all of the time and suffering from one too many close calls. She sighs, and they all look at her.

“We all know that we cannot continue like this,” she speaks, her voice soft but carrying easily. “Keith.”

He starts, clearly not expecting to be called on so suddenly. “Yes?”

She knows what they, the lions, want. She can feel it, just in that same way that she knew who was to be the Paladin of each lion in the first place. And she’s not going to disagree with them. She walks forward to where it had been placed, on the central table, and gives it to Keith. He swallows, hard, knowing as well as she did what has to happen, and gives her his old one.

The armour is one that she has saw many times in her life. Obviously, it’s not the exact same uniform, having been destroyed many times in battle beyond repair, and replaced by their clothing synthesiser, but the design is the same. She wonders what the nine year old version of her would think, if she could see her now. 

She has always imagined that she would have some sort of knowledge, some sort of knowing, of what he father would want her to do when he was no longer there. How to rule, what decisions to take, what path to follow. She truly was relieved to see her father’s AI not just because she had missed him, but because she felt she needed that guidance. 

But now, although she has no idea what to do, what they need to focus on, how to find Shiro, she somehow knows that she’s heading in the right direction, and making her father proud. Dressed in her father’s old armour, she knows that she is ready to truly become a leader fit for Altea, if not for Voltron. The red bayard is heavy in her hand, and she feels her connection to Red. It’s not nearly the joyful occasion she had imagined it would be, considering that this bayard should be Keith’s, and the black bayard Shiro’s. 

Her father’s footsteps are engraved in her mind, showing her the path that he travelled once, and she knows somehow that she’s on the path he had always envisioned for her. She doesn’t know how to stay on that path, and she doesn’t know where it will lead her, but it’s a start. And now she must walk it alone, without his guidance, just led by the trust she has in herself.

Princess Allura lifts her head and looks in the mirror. 

Queen Allura stares back.

**Author's Note:**

> When Coran was going to pilot the Red Lion in 'The Ark of Taujeer', he said, "Finally Alfor, I will walk in your footsteps" - hence the motivation for Alfor as the Red Paladin. I also thought it was fitting since the show is clearly trying to convince us that Keith will become the Black Paladin, and so the Red Paladin position is open, possibly for Allura. 
> 
> I doubt Zarkon inherited the position of Emperor because it was mentioned by Ulaz that they thought expanding the Empire would bring them peace, but learned too late that a tyrant only sought power. This implies that he wasn't already in a position of power where he could just do what he wanted, as he has been shown to be in canon, but instead had to be supported to achieve his goals. Additionally, Zarkon's home planet was shown to be destroyed. This was probably his motivation for needing to bring about stability, although we don't know why it was destroyed in the first place. I made multiple Galra home planets simply because I wrote this as an act of extremely sudden genocide, and couldn't kill off all of the Galra in one swoop (although canon has indicated that their population levels are probably pretty low as it is, what with all the robot sentries around). 
> 
> Thanks for reading! Comments and kudos appreciated, constructive crit always welcome.


End file.
